It is an ancient practice to furl or reef mainsails and like sails by lowering the sail to the boom and folding or flaking the sail on the boom. After the sail has been furled and flaked on the boom, the furled sail is usually covered by a bag or other cover and then remains on the boom, being supported thereby. Often, the sail is simply flaked by hand as it approaches the boom, but this is a task which requires at least one crewman to work at the boom. Prior art workers have therefore attempted to provide ways to cause the sail to flake automatically as it is lowered. One of the earliest of such attempts was to provide lazy jacks, one on each side of the sail, to constrain the sail during lowering, but lazy jacks have at best accomplished only moderate improvement. More recently, lazy jacks, which run upwardly from the foot of the sail and pass on alternate sides of the sail via spaced grommets, have been used in the form marketed by Zip-Stop, Inc. under the trademark READY REEF. The upper ends of the brailing jacks are attached to the topping lift as seen for example in USA patent 4,688,506, issued Aug. 25, 1987 to Martinus van Breeme. While such approaches have achieved commercial success, they have the disadvantage that the lazy jacks tend to impede sail movement and the lazy jacks remain aloft after the sail has been lowered, while also not folding the sail or at least making the sail very difficult to cover, and there has been a continuing need for improvement.